eration for such things, except as the school bills indicate. Shall
we say twenty dollars a term--and I am not clear as to what a 'term' is!
In music lessons, for instance--" (She had evidently made some
calculations and scratched it out, and here the price was dropped for
ever and ever.)

To an unpractical woman such a drop is always soothing, and to a
sensitive pauper probably no less so. The letter ended with the
suggestion to Antony that he meet them in their own pew on Sunday
morning at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, and that he return with
them for dinner.

CHAPTER VII

He succeeded in keeping from the kind and curious interest of the
little ladies the state of his mind and his pocket, and his intentions.
It had not been easy, for when their courteous hints brought no
satisfaction, Miss Eulalie and Miss Mitty asked Fairfax out boldly what
he "was going to do"? Miss Mitty, on whom the task of doing up the hall
room had fallen, dreamed over the sketches she found (in his valise).
Spellbound, she held in her hand a small head of a dryad, and modestly
covered up with her handkerchief a tiny figure whose sweet nudity had
startled her. Antony parried questions. He had come to seek Fortune. So
far it rolled before him with the very devil in its tantalizing wheel,
but he did not say this to Miss Whitcomb. Miss Eulalie suggested to him
that his uncle "could make a place for him in the bank," but Fairfax's
short reply cooled her enthusiasm, and both ladies took their cue. In
the first week he had exhausted his own projects and faced the horrible
thought of disaster.

His nature was not one to harbour anything but sweetness, and the next
day, Sunday, when the sunlight poured upon New York, he thought of the
little cousins and decided to accept his aunt's invitation. The sky was
cloudless and under its hard blue the city looked colder and whiter than
ever. It was a sky which in New Orleans would have made the birds sing.
The steeples sang, one slender tower rocking as its early ringing bells
sang out its Sunday music on the next corner of the street, and Antony
listened as he dressed, and recognized the melody. He found it beautiful
and sang in his young voice as he shaved and tied his cravat, and made
himself impeccable for the Presbyterian Church. His own people were High
Church Episcopalians, and from the tone and music of these bells he
believed that they rang in an Episcopal building. There was no
mel